Airway Theatre

4001 S. Howell Avenue,

Milwaukee,
WI53221

For Airway 1: I live here in a small town south of Boston, Mass. and when I heard about the screaming of packed. Everytime Elvis came on the girls would start the Beatles we had something similar happen here in our 1000 seat theatre only it happened years before. It was in 1956 and our theatre was 1st run with Boston.. Love Me Tender with Elvis was playing. The theatre was packed with screaming girls(of course us boys were encouraging them. Bud K. the ass’t manager at that time would signal the projectionist to turn off the sound and he would stand up back telling everyone to shut up or he would shut down the movie and clear the theatre with no refunds. The price was I believe 35cents at that time. This reminded me so much of your story I just had to reply. It sounds real funny now. By the way the movie finished with screaming and crying and we all went home only to come back the next day and do it all over again. Thanks for the memory.

I was the projectionist at the Airway Theater when it closed. The last three days (April 18 to 20, 1966) the feature film was “Father Goose” (1964) starring Cary Grant and Leslie Caron, along with two short subjects.
A Universal International cartoon “What’s Peckin'” and a Universal International short “The Land”

The Airway Theater was located on the south west corner of the intersection of South Howell and Norwich Avenues, in what used to be called the Town of Lake – a southern “suburb” of Milwaukee.

If you looked WEST, down Norwich Ave. (prior to the construction of the freeway) you had a nice view of the awesomely TALL Art Deco style – Town of Lake City Hall, which was constructed around a central “water tower.”

I lived about two blocks west of this theater on S. 1st Place, for the first 22 years of my life. I walked past the building every day on my way to and from, school.

The Airway always had Sunday matinees, which were oriented toward the kids who lived nearby. And in the 50’s and 60’s there were a LOT of kids in that neighborhood. For 25 cents you got a few cartoons or shorts (three stooges, etc) a few previews and a DOUBLE feature. The usual “bill of fare” was some Sci-fi or horror thrillers.

What I remember most about the Airway was seeing the BEATLES movies there during the 1960’s. The manager, a GRUFF military type, crew cut – tyrant, must have rued the day that he booked those films, because nobody heard a word of dialogue over the SCREAMING of all the girls in the audience. In fact he turned off the movie, and came into the auditorium SEVERAL times to WARN the girls that if they didn’t stop screaming he would stop the film completely, and send everyone home. Which got lots of BOOO’s. It got quiet for a little while, but the screaming started all over again, after only a few minutes. The concession stand even sold – edible black licorice, BEATLES “record albums” (about 4 inches in diameter) during those movies, along with the customary theater sized boxes of Milk Duds, Good n' Plenty, Raisinets and Dots etc., not to mention the favorite – BUTTERCUP buttered popcorn.

And god forbid if you were caught “horsing around” during a movie. The ushers would shine a flashlight in your face and grab you up out of your seat, and make you pick up popcorn boxes, as a punishment. The number of boxes varied, according to the “transgression.” Some kids even got BANNED, if they were really nasty. At least until next week, when the teenaged ushers usually forgot your face among the throng of snot nosed kids.

According to my dad picking up popcorn boxes was a NOTHING punishment, becuase when he was a kid the other theaters made you pick up dead RATS. A somewhat dubious, but amusing story.

One of the most striking, yet seemingly “out of character” features of this theater was the drinking fountain ( or “bubbler” as they called it in Ma-waukee). It was located in a small niche or arch, which was decorated with a very colorful tile wall mural depicting what looked like a tropical bird and plants. It really didn’t “FIT” with the modern architecture of the rest of the building. Almost as if it had been transplanted to the Airway from a different location. Looking back, the bird may have been a PEACOCK, in honor of the name of the Architectural firm, Peacock & Belongia.

One small correction, the building was not demolished BEFORE becoming a (First Wisconsin) bank. The bank actually did some remodeling, then used the building that way for several years. It was LATER completely demolished, and a new bank building was constructed on the site. I remember because when the demolition began we “raided” the site to take some relics …as mementos. And there were bank deposit slips and bank related items in the debris, among with items which had been left over as part of the theater, like torn black velvet curtains, etc.

I must have seen HUNDREDS of movies at that theater over the years. Because in those days movies were THEEE – big thing. Let’s face it – LONG before cable, when TV was only black and white, on a “fuzzy” 14 inch diagonal screen, that had only 3 local stations (plus one PBS station and MAYBE one – UHF station …with the right antenna) going to the movies was MUCH better. Even the hokey 3-D films like “House of Wax” with those AWFUL red and green, headache causing, cardboard glasses, were still a TREAT.

Myles Belongia had been a pioneer in using quonset huts for theaters, and had designed the Middleton Theatre at Middleton, Wisconsin, the first such theater in the state. It was opened in 1946.

The Poblocki Sign Company erected a number of pre-fabricated quonset hut theaters throughout the region in the late 1940s, and advertised its services as a design-build company in Boxoffice for several years. Architect Belongia’s relationship with the Poblocki company went back at least as far as 1937. In that year he was one of the partners founding a company called Porcelain Fronts, Inc., which specialized in theater modernization. Bernard Poblocki was another of the partners, according to the item about the company in Boxoffice of September 4, 1937.

Here is an ad for Poblocki and Sons in Boxoffice of May 24, 1947. It attributes the design of its prefabricated quonset hut theaters to the firm of Peacock & Belongia. The Peacock in the firm was, of course, Urban F. Peacock. I’m not sure how long the partnership existed, but it’s only ever mentioned in Boxoffice in the year 1947.

The architects “Peacock and Belongia” occur on the 1946 Application for Building permit, but nothing came of that permit for some reason, and the 1948 Application and Permit list only Belongia who had left association with Peacock in the interim. The difference in seating total is due to the difference in “proposed” seats listed on the Application, and the actual count of 600. The 50 seats in the upper balcony were not always included in the count total. It was recessed next to the projection room and was discontinued as public seating after not many years.

A woman working at the Bay View library related to me that she had attended the AIRWAY many times in her youth both for movies and also on Sunday mornings when it served for years as a church. Whether or not this was the Goderski’s congregation, or whether or not such services produced rent for the AIRWAY is unknown.